


‘Round the Bend and Go Again (I’ll Meet You Halfway)

by Kittycattycat



Category: Le magasin des suicides | The Suicide Shop (2012)
Genre: Also btw mishimas deadname is used at the end of the fic just fyi, Angst, Awkward Crush, Body Dysphoria, But mostly angst, But very very vaguely, Coming Out, Confessions, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Gender Issues, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Love Confessions, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Misgendering, Mistaken Sexuality??, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, POV Second Person, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexuality Crisis, They’re in school but it’s canon-adjacent not au, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, and doesn’t come out within this story, but again it’s absolutely not intentional, if u can’t tell Mishima is transmasc but isn’t out yet, just in the past, lucrèce thinks she’s a lesbian but she is Very Bi, not on purpose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23937538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittycattycat/pseuds/Kittycattycat
Summary: You are not a pretty girl, this much is true.
Relationships: Lucrèce Tuvache/Mishima Tuvache





	‘Round the Bend and Go Again (I’ll Meet You Halfway)

You are not a pretty girl, this much is true.

This information has not necessarily come to light by what your family says about you, though that may certainly have helped; rather, you just think you're downright ugly, especially in the clothes you wear.

Almost everything in your closet is a dress. That in and of itself is slightly troubling, though your not quite sure why, but the dresses themselves simply do not fit the way they were very clearly intended to. Tight, loose, short sleeve, long sleeve, knee length, above, below— none of it looks right. All the cloth seems to jut out at the wrong angles, or the colors clash with your skin or hair or whatever else it could possibly clash with. Too, the dresses seem to accentuate the unnatural spindliness of your form, both from starving yourself and from your father withholding food from you at times when he is upset. Your bones stick out slightly from your skin in a way that makes all clothing look generally bad on you.

All-in-all, wearing it just feels wrong.

\--

‘Fille.’ Girl. The bolder, black-print word stares back up at you from the papers you gather up in your arms. The teacher had sent you out to get papers for the young elementary school children, math papers and vocabulary sheets. And so you did. And now, the word will not leave your head, no matter how many different and unrelated things you try to fill your mind with. 

A ’fille’ is what you have been taught from day one that you are. It is the term you use to describe yourself. It has not occurred to you that you could be anything else, and you think nothing strange of that. This is how the world works, you are told. And so you believe it to be as such. You wonder, idly, if you can become a homme when you grow up. A man.

You realize with no trace of plausible deniability that you want to be a homme. 

“Tuvache!” the teacher yells from down the hall, impatient. You take your time walking back to the classroom. 

\--

You're in the middle of a dark, damp, dingy alleyway when you have your first true breakdown. Something is wrong, and your skin is itching and you’re picking and you’re gritting your teeth and banging your fists on something and—

You're mad, you're mad, you're mad. Forget seeing red— it feels as if your vision has gone out entirely. The world is dark and terrifying and with nothing fueling you but your own rage and the frantic splashing of puddles and standing water beneath your flats—

—

And then Lucrèce is there. Your knuckles are bloody and your socks are thoroughly soaked with muddy rainwater and the skin of your knees has small holes imprinted into it from bits of pebble and pavement. 

There is another lapse in memory, and you’re on top of a building, sitting next to her. You’re staring blankly at the large, weather-worn air unit in front of the both of you, breaths huffing from you like a car about to give out, or a bull about to charge. Perhaps both. 

“I have something to tell you,” Lucrèce says. You feel that she may have been talking to you for quite some time now, but you couldn’t know for certain. Even still, you hang on to the words you understand now.

‘I have something to tell you, too,’ you think. 

She hesitates in her speech, and so you sit on your hands and bide your time by swallowing thin streams of blood and the words you couldn't say. 

“I think I'm a lesbian,” she finally blurts.

There is a brief, uncomfortable beat of silence.

“Oh?” isn't so much what you say as it is the sound that tumbles out of your mouth unbidden, your heart sinking down hard enough to make a small thunk when it hits the bottom. Your head tilts down of its own accord, and you stare at your lap with eyes that won't focus.

“Yes. There is… there’s a girl I like. I want to hold her hand, kiss her. Isn't that what girls want to do with boys? But I've never met a boy I wanted to do that with before…”

Another beat, and you finally look up at her. Her face is red. Her eyes are wide and darting all over the place, as if she's said something unforgivable and forbidden and she's looking for a persecutor to come snatch her up. You think her hands are shaking, but you yourself are shaking so bad that it's rather hard to tell for sure. What does she want you to say? What does she need to hear? What are you supposed to do?

‘I like girls too” is the simple sentence that gets caught on the end of your tongue and wouldn't come out just right even if you tried. It's true, you like girls, but you also like boys. You aren't a lesbian. You aren't even a woman. But all of that feels strange and foreign to you. What if she thinks you're a liar if you tell her you like both? What if she thinks you're confused if you tell her you're not a girl? What will she do?

It takes you a moment to realize you're nearly hyperventilating. Your nails, covered in dirt and bits of gravel from earlier, dig into your palms hard enough to leave small pink crescent moon-shaped marks in their wake.

“No!” you practically shout, and after such a large bout of awkward discomforting silence she jumps so hard that for a split second you're afraid she’s going to fall backwards, “No! I'm… that's great, truly!”

“Are you sure?” she asks again, smoothing out her skirt.

“Absolutely,” you breathe, shaking your head unconsciously. This feels surreal, somehow. Like you're not apart of the scene unfolding, but rather a third party spectator watching this conversation happen.

From the outside looking in, you see tears of sheer relief roll down Lucrèce’s pudgy cheeks.

\--

It's two hours later. Stars fill the midnight sky and lights flicker on and off in the distance. The air is chilly, but you suppose this is how it will have to be. You layer your jacket across your shoulders to protect your arms from the cold hard concrete you're laying on. Elbow to elbow, leg to leg, back to back, laying on your sides, you and Lucrèce exist peacefully in a strangely familiar atmosphere

“Hey…”

“Yeah?”

“…You're the girl I like, Paulette,” she murmurs softly as she presses her warm back lightly against yours. Your breath catches in your throat and your heart is thrumming out of your chest, blood pumping and rushing in your ears and everything is moving too fast but it's absolutely amazingly beautifully perfect.

“That's not my name! I'm not a girl!” is in the back of your mind, forgotten, because this is too good for you to give up. For you to mess up.

“You're the girl I like too, you know,” is what makes its way past your lips. And you resign yourself quickly to your fate.

**Author's Note:**

> This is... an old fic, from September 2018. It wasn’t finished then and it isn’t finished now but I added some bits and I’m satisfied with the conclusion. Cheers, everybody.


End file.
